Authors

Abstract

This article examines an important and recurring question that courts frequently resolve, but rarely analyze: whether taxing and spending measures should be viewed together when a state imposes a nondiscriminatory tax but also affords relief to some taxpayers through government spending. The answer to this question will often determine whether the state's actions violate constitutional strictures against discriminatory taxation. The taxing measure and the spending measure will generally pass muster if viewed in isolation. After all, courts rarely invalidate nondiscriminatory taxing measures on constitutional grounds. And true government spending measures, if considered alone, plainly fall outside the reach of constitutional restraints against discriminatory government taxation. Ifthe two measures are considered together, the entire scheme will violate the operative antidiscrimination rule, because payments made to the favored group will produce the prohibited disparity in effective tax burdens. If, on the other hand, the court considers the two measures separately, they will emerge unscathed from the constitutional attack.

Repository Citation

Dan T. Coenen and Walter Hellerstein,
Suspect Linkage: The Interplay of State Taxing and Spending Measures in the Application of Constitutional Antidiscrimination Rules
(1997),
Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/fac_artchop/696